It's been almost 2 months since I returned to the United States after spending a year overseas on a missions trip called The World Race. And it was one of the hardest, most incredible adventures I've ever been on with the Lord. But during the last year, the Lord has taught me so many things.
One of the biggest takeaways for me on the Race, outside of having my identity as a daughter of the King firmly rooted and established in my heart, was that I have a voice that is both powerful and carries authority. And it is coupled with a deep conviction to live out Proverbs 31:8-9: “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth and judge righteously. Defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Over the last year, the Lord has been calling me out of hiding and calling me out of silence. And I believe that He is calling me to use my voice to fight against oppression and injustice. To open my mouth and speak up for those whose voices have been stripped away. For those who have lost the will to fight for themselves. That is the Lord’s call on my life and I believe that He is calling me to Beauty from Ashes Ministries to begin living that out.
Before this year, I’d never really had a heart for women. In fact, after spending four years attending a women’s college, I was quite sick of hearing people talk about women’s right and fighting against women’s oppression. But during this past year, the Lord began to break my heart for women, specifically those trapped in the sex industry and the sex trade.
While in the Philippines, I got the opportunity and distinct privilege of working with a ministry called Wipe Every Tear. While there, I lived with women who had been bought, sold, and forced into the sex trade. Women who had been betrayed by the very people who were supposed to love, care for, and protect them. I met girls on the street who looked like they had barely hit puberty. 12 and 13-year olds who climbed into cars with grown men who took them to God knows where for the night.
And my heart broke. And it still breaks. Because they are worth SO. MUCH. MORE. They were created for more. They were designed for more. They were made for freedom. Radical, life-altering, liberating freedom. The kind of freedom that sets others free. And more than anything, I desire for their hearts to be set free.
That is my desire for my own heart as well and what I hope to acquire by interning at BFA. My desire is to spend another year being discipled and working in an environment where the truth about my worth and my value will continue to be ingrained in my own heart and where I will be pushed to deeper levels of freedom in Christ.
In doing so, my prayer is that the Lord would use me, my story, and my voice to pour into the lives of the women I get to meet over the next year and that they would encounter the God of the universe who desperately longs to fulfill the promises of Isaiah 61 in their lives.
If you would like to be a part of this journey and join in on the fight to rescue women from the sex trade, please check out My Campaign and pray about what God would have your role to be.
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